Foreword

In 2019, in its quadrennial report on the State of the environment in France, the General Commissariat for Sustainable Development (CGDD) chosed to use the planetary boundaries framework for the first time, to extend the environmental diagnosis of France beyond its borders. This framework, proposed in 2009 by the Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), revised in 2015 (Steffen et al.) and again in September 2023 (Richardson et al.), aims to define a "Safe operating space for humanity" based on the evolution of nine complex and interconnected phenomena. Subsequently, discussions sparked by the proposals of the Citizens' Climate Convention the need to revisit the concept of planetary boundaries, making it more explicit and questioning its possible uses, particularly on other geographical scales.

This is the aim of this publication. It aims to answer to the following questions: what issues do planetary boundaries raise? What issues are associated with them? Where do we stand at a global level with regard to these boundaries? What is France's responsibility in transgressing these boundaries? What measures have already been taken to prevent these boundaries from being transgressed or to bring them back below? This publication also aims to show how this conceptual framework of the nine planetary boundaries can be useful for reflection at both national and local levels. To illustrate this, the CGDD requested the expertise of Natacha Gondran, professor of environmental assessment and co-author of the publication « Les limites planétaires », to present an overview of possible uses of this framework at company or regional level, in collaboration with the Epures Urban Planning Agency for the Saint-Etienne region. Work and reflection on planetary boundaries continue. For example two new publications were released in 2023. In June, a community of "Earth Commission" (Rockström et al.) defined thresholds of safety and justice between human communities and between generations, proposing eight safe and fair habitability boundaries for Earth System. In September, SRC published an updated version of the framework with a number of new variables and updated values.

- Thomas Lesueur

General Commissioner for Sustainable Development